Summer Visitors - Strategies for Dispatching Fruit Flies in the Kitchen

Fruit flies floating in vinegar trap

With all the produce and fruit coming in during summer, some unwelcome 'guests' appear, wanting to eat and make merry (reproduce) in your kitchen.  No need to spray.  Make a vinegar trap for your kitchen counter and lure the little beasts away from your fruit.  Re-use a plastic soda or coffee cup with a lid.  Punch some holes around the walls at least 2-3 inches above the bottom with an ice pick and maybe make some holes in the lid.  Pour in some apple cider vinegar (about 1-2 inches) and put the lid on.  Then wait.  If you make it, they will come.  During a period of 24 hrs, this trap ensnared over 30 fruit flies.

Have you ever tried to kill a fruit fly by slapping it between your hands?  Rarely works.  But if you wet your hands first, often the little flies will adhere to the wetness and thereby be 'captured' on your hand, waiting to be dispatched  to – if not already in fruit fly heaven.

Drosera entrapping a fruit fly.  The leaf
will soon curl up and secrete digestive
enzymes since it detects an insect.

For those of you with children or with a child-like heart, you may wish to procure a fruit fly eating plant called Drosera capensis, also known as Cape Sundew. The Venus Flytrap is too large to capture fruit flies.  The Cape Sundew is just the right size, fun to watch and beautiful in the sun with its leaves which are densely covered with red-tinged plant hairs (tricomes) that secrete a sticky sap insects find irresistible.  NB: Water only with distilled or rain water.